Performance and reliability of a parallel robot controller

Abstract

Most robot controllers today are uniprocessor architectures. As robot control algorithms become more complex, these serial controllers have difficulty providing the desired response times. Additionally, with robots being used in environments that are hazardous or inaccessible to humans, fault-tolerant robotic systems are particularly desirable. A uniprocessor control architecture cannot offer tolerance of processor faults. Use of multiple processors for robot control offers two advantages over single processor systems. Parallel control provides a faster response, which in turn allows a finer granularity of control. Processor fault tolerance is also made possible by the existence of multiple processors. There is a trade-off between performance and level of fault tolerance provided. The work of this thesis shows that a shared memory multiprocessor robot controller can provide higher performance than a uniprocessor controller, as well as processor fault tolerance. The trade-off between these two attributes is also demonstrated.